


Tracing The Stars On Your Skin

by PunJedi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Crowley Has Freckles, Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Vignettes, gratuitous celestial imagery, mostly - Freeform, soft. this is so soft.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-05 23:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20281969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunJedi/pseuds/PunJedi
Summary: Crowley's freckles look like stars, Aziraphale thinks. Stars inscribed on his skin, strange speckled constellations.He is more right than he knows.(AU where Crowley wore the stars in his skin before his Fall, and after it they scarred into freckles.)





	Tracing The Stars On Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> All inspiration credit goes to the beautiful au/comic by Asphaloth about Crowley having freckles where the stars had been burned out of his skin after his Fall. It's seriously gorgeous art, guys, check it out [here](https://glorfy-the-bright-haired-ellon.tumblr.com/post/186802557161/lol-what-if-crowley-had-freckles-that-were-stars)!
> 
> This was born of my insatiable love for the majesty of the space aesthetic, my love for writing soft romance scenes, and my love for Aziraphale and Crowley. Make of that what you will.  
(Also, my love of freckles.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! :)

** _SERPENS_ ** **—The Serpent**

At the beginning of things, about six thousand years before the end of things and six thousand years and a day before the beginning of things again—a serpent crawled up onto the top of a wall to stand by an angel, staring out at the world’s first storm.

The serpent glinted darkly in the light, ebony with a maroon underbelly, brown scales speckled down the length of it. The angel glanced over at it as it transformed into a demon—black plating becoming black robes, red hair forming, yellow eyes remaining constant. Brown specks became brown flecks on skin—not the mold stains and pustules of other demons, but the simple freckles that would become so prevalent amongst humanity, appearing under the sunlight.

Ironic, maybe, given that a demon wasn’t meant to spend much time under the sun and the stars—but irony was still cooling in the forges of God’s workshop, so neither angel nor demon paid the fact any heed.

Instead, they stood together, exchanged a few less-than-hostile words, and the angel raised his wing over the demon as the sky wept.

** _PHOENIX_ ** **—The Firebird**

It wasn’t until 1202 that Aziraphale mentioned the freckles. It simply wasn’t done, after all, to take special notice of a demon’s appearance. One should know what a demonic aura  _ felt _ like, in order to be on one’s guard at all times, but the actual physical details of their corporations were negligible. Aziraphale pretended that he still upheld that divine standard, but that was mostly due to the fact that Crowley sported a new look every time they crossed paths.

In fact, Crowley’s appearance was only constant in three regards: his hair colored like the flames of Hell (or so Aziraphale supposed, never having seen them himself); his slitted yellow eyes, and then his tinted glasses, once they’d been invented; and his freckling. It didn’t fade like some humans’, remained that same steady brown spattering his face, his neck, his arms, like earthen stars.

Which was not a proper thought for an angel, nor one that would leave him. It reached a point where it bothered him so much that there was simply nothing for it: he had to know why Crowley had such an  _ earthly _ thing scratched onto his skin, something that could have easily been erased after any of his discorporations.

They had run into each other—completely coincidentally, of course—in Hangzhou during the Song Dynasty. Some grand new form of entertainment had been invented recently, something with violent, colorful explosions shooting willy-nilly into the air. The details eluded Aziraphale, but he’d seen Crowley lurking near where the display was kept and carefully lured him away with an offer of dinner. It wasn’t really tempting, was it, if you were keeping a demon from setting fire to a great many things?

It had been quite a lovely meal, regardless, though Aziraphale kept finding his attention drawn to the vexing spots dotting Crowley’s face, which was irritating, and may have led to him imbibing a bit more than he normally would have. But the demon matched him, glass for glass, so they were in the same boat.

Literally—boats were jetting out into the harbor, to better watch the new fireworks. Crowley had scowled getting into one, slurring something under his breath about an ark, but Aziraphale had been adamant. Something lodged deep in him, loosened by drink, hadn’t wanted to let the demon out of his sight—the reason why, though, his mind glanced over like an arrow off armor.

(His mind glanced over a great many things back then.)

Anyway, the night was rather pretty out in the bay. There was a nice breeze, though temperature was something that happened to other people; strains of music and laughter warbled from the shoreline; stars were glittering up in the sky and reflected down on the still water, as if their boat was floating in the deep of space rather than on Earth’s surface.

And, frustratingly, Aziraphale found himself not focusing on the stars above or below him, but the ones fanned out on Crowley’s face. It was just so strange, he mused to himself, staggering a bit as the ship rocked with a sudden swell. Strange, and… odd. Odd and strange. Why a demon would have such innocuous marks, no purpose, no obvious aesthetic appeal… at least, not a demonic aesthetic. Didn’t… didn’t most demons have warts and things, mildew growing up their skin, rather than freckles? Even a good scar or two would make more sense.

Odd and strange and oddly strangely beautiful. Which was not at all an angelic thought, nor a demonic trait, and Aziraphale banished it as soon as it touched the surface of his muddled, sloshing thoughts.

But the curiosity remained, and curiosity plus alcohol rarely equalled carefully thought-out plans. This instance was no different. “Crowley,” he finally ventured, gathering his courage and over-enunciating to try and keep the slur out of his speech, “why—why do you have, freckles? Not that they’re—ugly, er—”

Crowley, who had been staring up at the sky with a strange melancholia on his face, met Aziraphale’s searching gaze and frowned. “What—”

And it was at that moment that the humans demonstrated their uncanny talent for blowing things up, setting the sky aflame in whites and reds and blues. Aziraphale, still less than sober, nudged Crowley clumsily and pointed up at the sky. “Look,” he said, with the sense that he’d just dodged a crossbow bolt, feeling uncommonly, obscenely grateful toward humanity. “There they go.”

Crowley rolled his eyes, saying “Yes, angel, I  _ did _ notice the loud, obvious explosions,” but he turned his face toward the shoreline. Aziraphale’s gaze lingered—the colored flares reflected in the dark panes of Crowley’s glasses, the play of light over his face, glinting off his hair—before he forcibly ripped his attention away, back to to the fireworks.

They were beautiful, Aziraphale thought, keeping his eyes carefully trained on the bursting globes of luminescence set against a backdrop of stars. Simply beautiful.

There was a grunt from beside him, as if someone had just been hit soundly in the gut, and he turned. Blinked. Looked around owlishly, as if that would yield anything on this tiny craft. “Crowley? Oh, dear.”

The demon was gone, which the drunken Aziraphale felt with a great deeper sense of loss than he usually would have allowed himself to feel. That registered with no small amount of alarm, and he forced himself to sober up rapidly, miracling all the wine swirling in his bloodstream straight into the bay.

Clearheaded, he reasoned that Crowley was a demon, and therefore had temptations to perform, obligations to persons other than him. Clearheaded, he banished any disappointment the thought registered deep into the bay with the wine.

He turned his gaze back to the fireworks and the starry backdrop behind, but it had lost appeal. As far as inventions went, Aziraphale preferred the new printing press. With a snap of his fingers, he nudged the boat back to shore, resolving to erase this encounter from his memory entirely.

The next day he left the entire Asian continent, and didn’t see Crowley for another two centuries.

That was enough time for him to dismiss the strange burning curiosity—the thing that felt like a firecracker trapped in his sternum, or maybe even a captured star—as nothing more than the heat of alcohol. That was enough time for the night sky to stop reminding him of a certain demon every time he glanced heavenward.

That was enough time (he convinced himself) to forget. 

It wasn’t. Willful ignorance was a perfectly effective substitute, though.

** _SAGITTA_ ** **—The Arrow**

But the only two occult (slash ethereal) beings on the Earth had a tendency to come together, regardless of how hard they tried to stay away. There was a certain ineffability about it, you might say.

So Aziraphale was not surprised in the slightest when he found himself at the opposite end of Crowley’s sword, standing in a dank stone hallway right outside a thick, heavily-barred door. However, the demon seemed to be.

“Aziraphale?” He blinked at him, looking bewildered to find the point of his sword resting on Aziraphale’s stomach. “I didn’t think you were in the area.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale replied. “I should have known. Were you the one who got the humans to lock this poor girl up? Honestly, that’s beneath even you, Crowley.”

“No!” the demon exclaimed, raising his hands in a placating gesture—which only worked about half as well when one was holding a sword. Aziraphale rubbed at the spot where the metal had been pressing, a bit irritated. “No, that was all humanity. She’s practically a kid—you  _ know _ I don’t kill kids. And I respect her approach to human gender customs.”

“Well, what are you doing here then? If you have nothing to do with poor Miss d’Arc’s imprisonment.”

Crowley scowled, looking away. “Below wanted someone to keep any…  _ divine intervention _ … from stopping the execution at the last minute.”

“Keeping her from being saved is basically killing her, you know.”

“There is a  _ world _ of difference there, angel,” he responded hotly. “Besides, I can’t get near enough to help her. Too…  _ holy _ . Receiving messages directly from God leaves an unfortunate… er, aura thingy around humans. Burns a bit. Have to stay out here, guarding her.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m here, then. Couldn’t let her die, you know, the Almighty frowns on having her mouthpieces slaughtered for heresy.” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably. “Er, if you wouldn’t mind… stepping aside…”

“Oh…” Crowley drew out the word, as if considering, before finally sheathing his sword. “Oh, fine. You owe me, though. My next few temptations are yours.”

“What about temptation singular and a nice dinner?”

The demon huffed, slouching a bit, but conceded, “Fine, yes. Temptation and a dinner.  _ And _ a bottle of wine. No, two.”

Aziraphale beamed. “That’s settled, then. I’ll just—”

A shout, a twang, and blinding pain erupting somewhere in the middle of his chest. He tried to take a step, stumbled, fell against the wall, against something with desperate, searching hands. The angel looked down at himself, and the iron point protruding from him, dripping red onto the floor, staining his new doublet. Drat, he’d rather liked that one, he thought woozily.

“Angel,” he heard an anguished voice say over the din of shouting and metal clanging. “Shit, shit, shit—” An arm raised behind him, something hard and round and metal pressing to his back, shuddering as more twangs filled the air. Aziraphale groaned… he should, he should be able to do something about this wound, but… he couldn’t…

A feral hissing noise shrilled near his ears, and the shouting turned to high, panicked screams. He looked up into eyes bled entirely yellow, snake scales already morphing back into skin and hair, and Crowley said, “We’ve got to get you out of here, Aziraphale.”

“Hurts,” Aziraphale slurred. He patted blindly at the barb poking out, and Crowley snatched his hand away.

“I know it does, angel, I know,” he said, voice running high and fast, like the arrow. “But you’ve gotta stay with me, okay? Just…” With a grunt, he slung Aziraphale’s arm over his shoulder, prompting another yelp of pain. “…you’ve gotta…” He wrapped his arm around Aziraphale, grunting again as the angel slumped most of his weight into him. Stars spun in Aziraphale’s vision, white ones and brown ones, blackness encroaching at the edges. “…stay with me.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured.

“Yeah, angel,” he said, huffing harsh breaths as he pulled them down the dark hallway, “I’m here.”

Not much reached Aziraphale past that point, past the haze of pain and shadows—just vague impressions, like tinny shouting and the glow of miracles being performed, the spotty brightness of torchlight and then the whoosh of it being extinguished, the solid, knife-thin presence at his side, dragging him onward.

The hard stone under his feet turned softer and he nearly tripped, but he was caught—he didn’t have any say over what his body did anymore, this weak human corporation that was falling apart and tying his soul down with the pain—and they continued trudging onward.

With a sudden grunt, he felt himself being lowered—falling?—to the ground, a dull rasping pant sounding next to him. With an effort that felt like lifting the sky rather than lifting his eyelids, Aziraphale opened his eyes to see bright white dots glimmering on a navy backdrop. “Wha…”

Crowley’s head appeared in his vision, carefully curled hair askew, dark glasses cracked. “Hold on, angel,” he said, before Aziraphale could try to speak again. “I need to heal you, hold on.”

He put gentle, shaking hands on Aziraphale’s chest, near where the front part of the arrow still protruded. Something clicked in the angel’s brain—miracles, Hell,  _ Crowley _ —and he tried to bat Crowley’s hands away, off his chest. “You… you’ll get in trouble,” he slurred. “Healin’ me.”

“Shut up, Aziraphale,” he replied, and pressed his hands more firmly to Aziraphale’s chest, sending a spike of pain through him. He groaned, and Crowley winced. Almost as if to himself, he murmured, “Hold on, angel.”

Aziraphale trusted Crowley, despite it all. So he did hold on—he clung to this crumbling corporation despite how much his soul wanted to break away, wanted to go back up to Heaven, where physical pain was but an unpleasant, fuzzy memory.

The arrow disappeared from his chest, which immediately started weeping blood. Aziraphale moaned like he’d been punched in the stomach, the stars above him spinning and dimming, but before his last tether to this form could snap, golden warmth suffused him. It started in his chest, two bright handprints of relief, and then poured into the hole pierced through him, filling it up, knitting it back together.

Crowley’s face hovered over him all the while, eyes squeezed tight in concentration behind his shattered glasses; they finally sprung open as Aziraphale felt the flow of warmth gutter like a candle flame and go out, though the hands remained where they were.

“Crowley…”

“You ought to sleep, angel,” Crowley said gently, and Aziraphale nodded, barely aware of what was being said. He was healed, but exhausted, and warm, and Crowley was there. Crowley, with his bright, worried eyes, and his spray of freckles all across his skin, like a galaxy had nestled within him and continued to shine through.

“They look like stars,” Aziraphale said woozily, half conscious and even less lucid. He reached up, unsteady, but managed to brush a thumb over Crowley’s cheekbones, over his freckles. Over where the freckles melted in with the starlight above, the edges fraying and spilling together, white and brown and midnight blue.

The demon closed his eyes against the touch, and for a split second, Aziraphale thought he might be  _ enjoying it _ —but then he pulled away, glanced away. Darkness started to bleed in at the edges of Aziraphale’s vision, and while in any other circumstance the angel might have welcomed it, it seemed a nuisance in this instant, obscuring his vision of Crowley.

“Stars,” he echoed weakly, though he couldn’t find the strength to raise his arm again. The one word seemed to have taken the last of his strength, in fact, and blackness swept in like a dark wing folding over him.

The last thing he heard—in the hazy state of the almost asleep, making it impossible to distinguish between dream and reality—was a soft, sad voice saying, “They were.”

When Aziraphale woke, the wound was completely healed, not even a bloodstain left behind. Crowley was gone, as were all memories of the night before.

This registered with a deep sort of disappointment, so far buried that Aziraphale hardly noticed it. Instead, he made a mental note to thank the demon with dinner the next time they ran into each other, brushed himself off, and continued on with his life—his life, thanks to Crowley, in  _ this _ corporation.

As he trudged off to find a place to stay for the night, he spared a glance up at the night sky, sprawling and bright with stars. Something twinged in him, but he ignored it.

** _ERIDANUS_ ** **—The Celestial River**

Aziraphale found Crowley leaning over the side of a bridge, overlooking the Arno River.

The demon was wearing a long maroon dress, with puffed sleeves and a flat, low neckline, fiery hair done up in elaborate braids. His dark glasses glinted in the bright sunlight, and his freckles were the same steady brown Aziraphale had avoided thinking about for centuries.

But he’d gotten rather good at repression—humans had a remarkable talent for it, and he sometimes felt a bit more human than he suspected Above would approve of—and the fact of the freckles hadn’t bothered him in nigh five hundred years, back in Song China. It helped that he hadn’t gotten riotously drunk near Crowley in nigh five hundred years, as he had back in Song China, nor had he allowed himself to study the demon for any extended period of time. The fourteenth century had given him a nice bit of distance from the issue—he still didn’t know where Crowley had gone then—and by the time the fifteenth one had rolled around, Aziraphale had gotten a handle on it all.

Maybe not on  _ all _ of it. The memory of a quick miracle in a sparse theater audience, “My treat,” Hamlet’s overnight success—it still made something all-too-pleased flutter within him. But that was irrelevant: the triumph of getting a demon to show patronage for the fine arts, and nothing more.

Still, he’d been feeling… dare he say it…  _ lonely _ , and once he’d gotten wind of the Renaissance, he’d figured Crowley would be in the area. All that vice and debauchery, and of course the  _ new ideas _ humanity was seizing onto. God had been quite clear, starting all the way back with the apple in Eden:  _ new ideas _ were very dangerous. (Aziraphale, for his part, didn’t have much against  _ new ideas.  _ Except fireworks, and opera.) But Crowley was bound to be attracted to it like a fly to fruit, or a demon to… well… sin.

He’d been right, naturally—angels were always right, that was the job description. (Admittedly, he was a bit late to the renaissance party, but he’d been quite busy in England, thank you.) And, pretending that he hadn’t been carefully thinking  _ around _ Crowley for the past many decades, he took a spot against the high stone balustrade next to him.

“Galileo Galilei,” Crowley said, apropos of nothing, still staring out over the green water. “Just died, you know. Life sentence imprisoned, caught a fever.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale replied, caught off-guard. When Crowley didn’t elaborate, he ventured, “Was that… was that your lot’s work, then?”

The demon turned at that, and though the glasses obscured his eyes, Aziraphale had to quash the urge to squirm under his gaze. “ _ My _ lot,” Crowley drawled, eyebrows raised to his hairline.

“Well, yes,” Aziraphale replied, suddenly self-conscious. “Your lot is the one that kills people, and those sorts of unpleasant things.”

“Really. What about 3004 BC, the Ark business?”

“That was—”

“And the Crusades?”

“I’d hardly—”

“1347, the Black Death?”

Aziraphale pursed his lips and tried not to look like he’d just lost the argument. “God works in ineffable ways.”

Even the glasses couldn’t hide the massive eye roll Crowley responded with— _ that _ , the eye roll, was one of Hell’s, Aziraphale was sure of it. “Oh, you and the bloody ineffableness.”

“Ineffability,” the angel corrected primly. (While the prevailing theory was that English grammar rules were a product of Hell’s, in fact, both he and Crowley had had a hand in them. And by hand, he meant they’d both gotten drunk and forgotten how to differentiate between French, German, and Latin, and the slurred-out mixture of the three had become English. They’d invented Pig Latin under similar circumstances.) “And  _ fine,  _ yes, we’ve had our hand in a few deaths here and there. But”—he waved a hand vaguely—“we haven’t got anything against… what was he, again? I apologize, I haven’t been in Florence very long—”

“An astronomer, angel, keep up.”

“Right. We haven’t got anything against astronomers. Just look at the sky and copy it down into books, don’t they? No harm in that.”

Crowley hummed in the way of cynics who were about to disagree quite strongly with a point and ideally destroy someone’s worldview in the process. “Except  _ my _ lot don’t care where humans think the bloody Earth is in the sky. We’re fine, actually, with orbiting the sun.” 

“Oh. Was it, er—” Aziraphale stammered in the way of optimists who knew the world was not quite as sunny as they liked to believe, and were trying desperately to tape all the fracturing pieces back together.

“Yes, it was the Church. Locked him up for life, said his ideas were heresy. Imagine that.” Crowley smiled a bit, argument won. “Someone being killed because their ideas went against… what was it again? God’s ineff—”

“Oh, fine, Crowley,” Aziraphale huffed. The demon’s smile widened, stretching the play of freckles over his skin. “You’ve made your point. Shouldn’t you be off—off tempting some priest, or whatever it is you do?”

He got a loose wave in response. “There’s so many artist-types in this bloody city, I don’t need to lift a finger. Just dropped by to see what the big to-do about the telescope was.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, at a lost for how to reply, and they lapsed into silence, watching the city tick along like clockwork around them and the river stream by beneath their feet.

“It’s a shame, though,” the demon eventually said. “Brilliant man.”

Aziraphale glanced at him, getting the sense that he was expected to reply but not knowing what to say. “Well, yes. But he spoke against the Almighty, didn’t he?”

Crowley stared up at the sky, and his voice went quiet, thoughtful. “Is asking questions speaking against the Almighty?”

Feeling woefully wrong-footed, Aziraphale replied, “Well… must be. But you mustn’t let it bother you, Crowley”—Crowley looked over at him, surprised, which was much Aziraphale’s reaction to the attempt at reassurance spilling out of his mouth—“after all, he just nattered on about the stars. Surely there will be more humans—more astronomers. Besides,” he said, trying to ignore the fact that he was babbling in order to, what? Make a demon feel better about a human’s death? “It’s not like  _ we _ have much to worry about, with the stars. They’re not going anywhere, whatever humans think, and we surely didn’t have anything to do with putting them up there.”

“I—” Crowley choked on the word, and Aziraphale was startled into reaching over to pat his back awkwardly, grateful for the interruption and then guilty because of it. When the demon regained control of himself, he shoved Aziraphale away, falling back a step. His head darted back and forth in a distinctly  _ hunted _ way.

“I don’t care about the bloody humans,” Crowley grit out, “and I certainly don’t care about the bloody  _ stars. _ ”

With that, he stalked off, grabbing his maroon skirts to keep them from dragging in the dirt, leaving Aziraphale thoroughly bewildered in his wake.

Bewildered, and  _ frustrated.  _ He hadn’t come all the way across Europe to find the dratted demon just to let him storm away in a poorly-explained huff.

But as he turned to run after him, he found that Crowley had disappeared into the crowd of people traversing the bridge, and there was nothing but the thread of an idea to chase.

_ Why the stars? _

** _SCULPTOR_ ** **—The Sculptor**

The question burned in Aziraphale like a star burning in the sky: constant, something you could set a watch by. But just like a star, it was unobtrusive, fading into the background when the sun came out—a close companion in the dark hours, when Aziraphale had nothing to do other than think, but rarely surfacing in the light of day. Humanity only spread farther and farther, and life only got busier and busier. When he saw Crowley—less often than he’d like, more often than he’d admit to liking—the problem of the stars got relegated to the back of his mind, much like the question of the freckles had all those years ago, back in ancient China.

What did it matter, if Crowley had a hang-up about the night sky, when he was rescuing him from the guillotine and then joining him for crêpes?

What did it matter, if any mention of constellations raised Crowley’s hackles, when  _ death _ was on the table, real, permanent death—when Crowley was asking for a  _ suicide pill _ ?

What did it matter, if Crowley hated the stars down to their core, when he bombed churches and saved books, delivered the Antichrist and melted demons to slag. What did it matter, when the end of all things was just around the bend?

But then, suddenly, the end gave way to the new beginning, and Aziraphale found himself with a future, freedom, and a friend.

Long-buried curiosity started to burn again, and there were no longer any reasons to avoid it.

So Aziraphale picked up his phone, rang Crowley, and invited him to the Ritz. His treat. He swallowed down the ache in his throat when Crowley drove up to his door, a long, lithe shadow with an almost shy smile waiting by a car as darkly colored as his clothing. He enjoyed a pleasant dinner with his dearest friend, the love of his life, and they talked about everything and nothing and drank and ate and  _ breathed _ , for what felt like the first time in years _ . _

Aziraphale did this all, and he enjoyed it, and tried not to worry that he was about to wreck their quiet peace like taking a sledgehammer to stained glass.

Finally, as they were just finishing dessert, their conversation lulled. Aziraphale had one last, fortifying forkful of cake, swallowed harshly, and laid his hand over Crowley’s where it rested on the table.

“Crowley,” he said, softly. “Why do you hate the stars?”

The demon looked as if he had to bite down on a hiss, rearing back and staring at the angel in shock. He snatched his hand away, and Aziraphale tried not to mourn the contact. “Wha—what—angel—”

“Don’t try and deny it,” Aziraphale said, not unkindly. “Whenever someone brings them up, you get touchy. I’ve noticed. I—”

“Well, you noticed wrong,” Crowley replied, finally finding his tongue, though it wasn’t as sharp as it usually would be. “I don’t have anything against the stars. Just—what was it—big balls of plasma, or somesuch. Didn’t do anything to me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Aziraphale—” He got to his feet, miracling some pound notes onto the table.

“But I thought—” Aziraphale half-rose to follow him, but Crowley waved him back.

“Just remembered I haven’t talked to my plants today, can’t have them getting sloppy. You stay here, finish your dessert. I’ll see you later.”

Aziraphale, who had been about to protest that he’d already eaten his slice of cake—as well as Crowley’s—looked down at his plate to find it full again. And then, filled with indignation at the thought that he could be paid off so easily, he looked back up… to find Crowley already gone.

Well, Aziraphale thought, alternating between irritated and concerned. At least that proved it: Crowley had something against the stars. It was just up to him to find out what.

He picked up his fork. But first, cake.

* * *

The advantage of having a carefully cultivated book collection, spanning countless centuries and subjects, was that one was never lacking for knowledge. They just had to be willing to dig deep and find it.

Which was what Aziraphale found himself doing, leafing carefully through every book and paper about astronomy he possessed, all piled around his desk haphazardly. He’d been through about half of his considerable store, with no success thus far—nothing that would obviously upset Crowley, at least not to the extent that he would refuse to talk to Aziraphale about it.

Especially  _ now _ —after the Apocalypse that hadn’t been. They’d been… well, they’d been doing better. At least in terms of trusting, and talking. Aziraphale still couldn’t bring himself to… to more fully address the thing that had been bubbling in him all those millennia, but that wasn’t important. What  _ was _ important was that Crowley was very obviously—and very poorly, at that—concealing something from him, and he was going to do his damndest to figure out what it was.

Astronomy was not something that Aziraphale had ever been particularly curious about—even after Florence and Crowley’s skittish behavior, it had never piqued his interest as it seemed to have Crowley’s. Oh, sure, he liked the stars, thought they were a brilliant bit of work on God’s part—or whichever angel had designed them, the specifics escaped him—but he preferred Earth. For its humans, for its literature, for its culinary arts. For the millennia worth of memories he’d accumulated on its surface, a sentiment that had a bit more to due with Crowley than he liked to admit.

Crowley, with his swagger and attitude that befitted a demon and kindness that didn’t. Crowley, with his snake-eyes and fire-hair and human freckles. If anything, those freckles mirrored the heavens—as far from hellish as something could get. In the grand schism of things, Hell got the underground. Heaven got the stars.

_ Stars… _

He stared down at a wide piece of navy parchment—studded with white marks, thin lines threading between them and creating carefully-labelled shapes—and things began to slot into place, like seeing a cluster of stars and linking it into a constellation.

But before he let himself jump to a conclusion… and what an  _ outrageous _ conclusion, and yet, it was the only one that made a lick of sense… he scrambled for a blank piece of paper. His memory was nigh perfect—one of the benefits of divinity, even in a human shell as he was—but better safe than sorry.

After locating one, he pressed the palm of his hand to it, and thought of Crowley. Not just of Crowley: of his face, of the freckles strewing it, those strange—and yes,  _ beautiful _ —marks that had captured his attention all those millennia ago.

A picture-perfect image of the demon inked itself on the paper, as if Aziraphale had managed to figure out one of those newfangled digital cameras and taken the photo himself.

With careful hands, he placed the image of Crowley next to the old star chart.

And stared.

It wasn’t a perfect comparison, of course. The planes of Crowley’s face weren’t the laid-flat drawing of the heavens, but it took little thought to imagine the freckles smoothed out: instead of dipping into the hollow of a cheekbone, arcing into the sky above. Instead of pale brown, blinding white-gold and shining.

It wasn’t a perfect comparison, but it was more than enough for Aziraphale.

He stood up, knocking several sheafs of paper to the floor in his haste, and strode out the door, out into the street. Any oncoming traffic found itself miraculously yielding to pedestrians as he walked past, taking the most direct route to Crowley’s flat that he could manage.

When he reached the flat, he hesitated, then knocked. Well, it didn’t do to be impolite, especially when you were going to confront someone with a very personal matter they had been carefully dodging for quite a number of years. “Crowley?”

No response; he knocked again, raising his voice. “Crowley?” Still no response, but he didn’t buy it for a second. “Oh, bother, Crowley! I know you’re in there! Am I going to have to miracle this door open my—”

The door swung open silently, and his irritation cooled. “Thank you.” He walked inside.

“You’re  _ most _ welcome,” came a sneer; walking further within revealed Crowley, draped over his throne at odd angles, reptilian eyes exposed and shining,  _ papers _ of all things floating around him. Aziraphale plucked one out of the air, curious, glancing over what appeared to be a deep-space photograph as Crowley continued to taunt him. “What _ ever _ can I do for you, angel? Come to pry more?”

Aziraphale released the paper back into the air, examined the demon, and then the knocked-over wine bottle on the ground beside him. A few drops of dark liquid dribbled out onto the floor, but it was clear where most of it had gone. “Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, the last of his frustration evaporating faced with the reduction of his dearest friend to  _ this. _ “My dear, what have you done to yourself?”

“What does it  _ look _ like?” Crowley gestured at himself in disgust, and hiccuped. “I ripped the bloody stars from my skin,  _ angel _ .” He spat the word like a curse, like a shameful desire, and Aziraphale wanted to recoil, wanted to let the insult carry him back out the door, but no. He couldn’t leave Crowley in this state. Heaven knew what he’d do to himself.

“You must sober up, dear,” Aziraphale coaxed gently, deftly miracling the wine bottle and stain into the ether. “Come on, Crowley. Please.”

At the “please,” Crowley scrunched his nose up—but then the tension flooded out of him and he nodded tiredly. “Fine, yeah.” His eyes squeezed shut, grunting, and when they opened again they were clearer. “Good enough, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale didn’t reply, just bent down, grabbed Crowley’s discarded glasses off the floor, and handed them to him—a pleased little smile crossing his face as the demon snatched them out of his hands and slid them on. He didn’t say thank you, but that wouldn’t have been proper for a demon.

He didn’t say anything, in fact: just stood and stared, with all the patience of a snake waiting to strike. Not a muscle twitched, and if he blinked, it was hidden behind tinted glass.

“Well,” Aziraphale finally said, finding the prolonged silence awkward, verging on uncomfortable. “Now that that’s cleared up—”

“What do you want, Aziraphale?” Crowley sounded weary, world-weary, in a way that made Aziraphale feel as if someone was rubbing his feathers in the wrong direction. “I thought I made it clear I don’t want to talk to you about… you know.”

Drunken words floated back to him, and Aziraphale echoed them. “Ripped the stars from your skin. Does that mean what I think it means, Crowley?”

The demon huffed, looking away. Aziraphale’s heart cracked a bit.

“I’m not  _ stupid _ , Crowley. I know you’re hiding something. And I think I know what you’re hiding. I swear, I don’t mind—I just want you to trust me with it, Crowley, I just want to  _ know _ —”

“Oh,” Crowley said, still turned away, and his voice was the whisper of a snake slithering through tall grass, creeping up on unsuspecting prey. “You want to  _ know _ .”

Aziraphale, a mix of desperate and hopeful, nodded quickly. “Yes. I—”

“I wanted. To  _ know. _ ” Crowley finally turned to him, and his glower was so bright that his glasses shone yellow. “I just wanted  _ answers. _ I… I made the  _ stars  _ at Her request _ ,  _ sculpted them with my bare hands, molded them from the essence of me. They lived in me, you know,” he said, and the anger fell from his expression as his eyes dimmed, replaced with a broken-hearted anguish.

“The stars?” Aziraphale asked, barely daring to breathe it.

But Crowley reacted with none of his past aggressiveness, just nodding, almost as if to himself. “The stars. I made them, I wore them.” He ran a hand up his neck, over his cheek, where the freckles were at their densest. Where the  _ stars _ had been. “But I asked too many questions for Her. And when I…” He trailed off, staring out into nothing, hands falling limp over the edges of the throne.

“Fell,” Aziraphale prompted gently.

“Yeah, that,” Crowley said. “When I… fell, She… ripped them out. Left these—these fucking  _ spots _ in their wake. Reminders. Scars.”

Oh, Aziraphale thought, I was right.

Oh, Aziraphale thought, it was so much worse than I imagined.

“They’re—” Aziraphale started, though he had no idea how he was going to finish the sentence.  _ Not just God’s mark on you? Not only scars? Beautiful? One of the things about you I lo— _

Maybe, then, it was a mercy that Crowley interrupted him. “You should go.”

“But—”

“Go, angel,” he said, sounding defeated in a way that he never did. His head hung, and his eyes were squeezed shut behind his glasses. “Go.”

“Okay,” Aziraphale said quickly, hating himself for it but not knowing an alternative. “Okay,” he said again, as he stumbled out the way he came, shooting glances back over his shoulder. Every look found Crowley in the exact same slumped position, crumpled in his throne, face turned away.

It took something fractured in Aziraphale and broke it to pieces, ripped it out of him like the stars had been so cruelly ripped out of Crowley’s skin, all those ages ago.

As he made the slow walk back to his bookshop, his mind whirred.

Crowley had told him to go. But, Aziraphale thought, a plan already beginning to weave itself together,  _ go _ didn’t mean  _ stay away. _

And no one, not God, not the demon who had hewn the very stars, could make him do so.

** _OPHIUCHUS_ ** **—The Serpent Holder**

The very next morning, Aziraphale hovered outside a rather sketchy looking establishment, debating the pros and cons of his plan—which was looking flimsier by the minute. But he forced himself to think of the anguish in Crowley’s voice, the self-loathing he wore like his freckled scars, and that clinched it.

He marched inside, and tried very hard to remember that physical pain was reserved for humanity.

* * *

That night, Aziraphale went to leave his bookshop for Crowley’s flat—only to open the door and find the demon waiting at it, shifting from foot to foot and looking up, startled, when it opened.

“Aziraphale?” he asked at the same moment the angel said, “Crowley?”

For a minute, neither of them spoke, until Aziraphale finally said, “Well… come inside, my dear, come inside.” He ushered him in; Crowley went.

“What are you… er, doing here?” Aziraphale asked after they’d settled into their regular chairs, wincing even as he said it. He was flustered—his plan had been to confront Crowley at his flat, wait outside all night if he had to, and show the demon exactly what he thought of his past and his scars. But this… Crowley coming to  _ him _ before he could go to  _ Crowley _ , that threw everything off-kilter.

Crowley stared at him for a beat, expression that might have been called hopeful twisting into something else, and he stood up before he’d barely sat down. “If I’m that welcome”—his voice dipped, just the faintest break of sound, though it felt like an earthquake to Aziraphale—“I’ll just go, then.”

He sped away, toward the door, trying to escape, and  _ no.  _ Aziraphale had not gone to all this trouble to chase him out with one fumbled sentence. That was  _ not _ going to happen. He was  _ not _ going to allow Crowley to dance around the issue for the rest of forever, constantly evading, constantly dodging, always popping back up and pretending that nothing was wrong in the first place. Well, something  _ was _ wrong, and Aziraphale had  _ done _ something about it, finally, and that work was not going to walk out the door with the demon.

“Don’t go,” he blurted, on his feet before he even realized it, crossing the room to Crowley just as quickly. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?” Crowley asked, clearly going for hostile but not even managing annoyed, looking at Aziraphale as if he were bewildered by his sudden proximity. All aggression had dissipated, if any of his aggression had been genuine in the first place. Instead, he looked… desperate, wearing the sort of wretched longing that belonged to those that didn’t dare to hope.

The last piece slid carefully into place, illuminating something bright and beautiful, like spending your whole life staring down at the dark earth before finally looking up to see the stars.

Rather than answering Crowley’s question, he took a step closer to him. Then another. In the corners of his vision, he registered the old lamps dimming around them—leaving just enough light to see each other by, as the windows shuttered by the same unconscious miracle-working. He took another step.

“I studied the constellations,” Aziraphale murmured, taking one last step toward Crowley, to the point where they were almost chest-to-chest. He half-expected the demon to recoil or retort, react as he always had in the face of the stars, but Crowley just stood stock-still, staring down at him. “Would you like to know what I learned?”

Crowley swallowed, loud enough that it echoed in Aziraphale’s ears, and nodded imperceptibly. His cheeks flamed red behind his brown freckles.

Aziraphale let himself smile, tilting his head up to look Crowley in the eyes; he lifted one hand and laid it, ever so gentle, against the curve of Crowley’s jawline. It jumped beneath his touch once, then stilled. Aziraphale brushed his thumb over it, over a cluster of freckles that was clumped there.

“This… is Eridanus.” A constellation, drawn into Crowley’s skin, one of so many. Aziraphale thought he might find the whole night sky—the night sky on a thousand worlds, not just Earth—scattered over Crowley’s body. What beautiful stargazing that would be. “And this”—he traced the freckles arcing over his eye—“is Phoenix.”

Crowley swallowed, opened his mouth, said, “Oh?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied quietly, smiling. “Would you like me to show you more? I’d imagine you’d know them all—you created them.”

“Show me,” Crowley rasped, raising a shaking hand to press against Aziraphale’s where it rested against his cheek, letting it fall back to his side, never dropping his gaze. The sunglasses disappeared in the span of a blink—Aziraphale couldn’t tell if the miracle had been intentional, but they didn’t reappear after. 

It was the most intimate permission Crowley could offer, he knew, and it warmed something deep within him.

He nodded easily, smiling wide and uninhibited. “Alright.”

Aziraphale brought his fingers up to brush at Crowley’s hairline, where a series of dots curved out of the fire-red of his hair. “Sculptor.”

Next, the stars pooled at the corner of Crowley’s mouth. His touch was feather-light, just barely skimming across skin, and he felt Crowley shudder, full-bodied, against him. “Sagitta.”

He trailed a hand down the smooth length of Crowley’s neck, tracing a long line of freckles snaking down the pale slope. His voice was a hoarse whisper as he said, “Serpens.”

He backed away, just a step, and felt Crowley’s wide eyes on him as he began to unbutton his vest, and then his shirt, pulling it open at the top. Revealing his heart. Revealing the brown-speckled pattern there, freshly healed and nearly identical to the ones lacing the demon’s skin.

“And here,” Aziraphale said, gently taking Crowley’s hand, lifting it to his own chest—now bare—and placing it solidly over his heart, “is Ophiuchus.” The word rolled off his tongue in four smooth syllables, a translation ready on his lips at the question in Crowley’s expression. “The Serpent Holder.”

Crowley’s lips parted; no sound came out, just a single, shocked huff of air.

“It’s… it’s not like yours,” Aziraphale said, starting to feel nervous about the whole thing for the first time since he’d strode out of the tattoo parlor. Crowley’s hand was cool against his warm skin, and it was making it rather hard to think. “It’s not tied to my corporations, but it’s as permanent as I could make it. I went to a tattoo parlor, you know, those places where you get ink stabbed into your skin? I just… I thought yours were— _ are _ —beautiful, and I didn’t want you to feel self-conscious, so—”

Crowley kissed him.

Aziraphale reacted on instinct, arms coming up behind the demon’s back to wrap around him, and Crowley’s other hand slid up to press against the angel’s chest. Noises pulled from deep in throats, pleasure-drunk and surprised, as hands skated across skin and bunched in clothing. They lost themselves in each other, found themselves in each other, the kiss like staring up into the vast, comforting eternity of the night sky. It was as natural as breathing—more so, as they didn’t need to breathe, but Aziraphale could tell that he needed this, needed  _ Crowley _ , more than anything.

They parted with soft gasps, staring at each other with sparkling eyes. Aziraphale opened his mouth to speak, to ramble, to babble—

“Thank you,” Crowley said before he could. “Thank you, angel.”

And open gratitude from a demon, even a remarkably humanish demon, was as rare as hot desire in an angel (even a remarkably humanish one). So rather than responding with words, Aziraphale leaned up and captured Crowley’s mouth with his own.

Not much else was said that night.

* * *

Several years later, very little was different. Aziraphale still collected his books and miracled reservations to expensive restaurants; Crowley still drove his Bentley thirty miles over the speed limit and threatened his plants. Very little was different, and yet, everything was: the unspoken words between them still went unspoken, but that was because speaking them was redundant, worse than stating the obvious. The words hummed between them during every conversation, every stroll, every kiss. Every word was an  _ I love you,  _ had been for centuries—there was no need to say it. At least, not yet. They did have eternity stretching before them, after all.

Crowley still avoided mention of the stars, but they never triggered such a violent reaction as they had in the past. Aziraphale thought—though the demon would vehemently deny it—that it was at least in part due to the fact that Aziraphale took a special kind of joy in kissing every freckle scarred on his body.

He had been right: it was the most beautiful kind of star-gazing.

Things were not perfect; they still carried their scars, their fears. Aziraphale would find himself checking over his shoulder, expecting a flash of divine light or intense violet eyes to greet him. Crowley kept another thermos of holy water locked in his safe. Things were not perfect, but they were good.

Hence why, when Aziraphale found himself being dragged outside for no discernible reason by a discernibly tense Crowley, he was content to follow, unquestioning for the most part. He’d already enquired if everything was alright, which had earned a quick “Yes, yes, angel.” While that was neither believable nor encouraging, Aziraphale was prepared to wait this out. It didn’t seem as if he would be waiting long.

Soon enough, he found himself in the middle of a park, standing in the grass and watching bemusedly as Crowley laid down. “My dear?”

“Lay down, angel,” he said, patting the ground beside him. Aziraphale did, glancing over at Crowley—he wasn’t afraid to admit he was thoroughly at a loss as to what the demon’s purpose was—but he was just staring up at the night sky.

As he didn’t seem inclined to speak, and Aziraphale didn’t want to break this careful peace, he followed suit.

The clouds that had threatened earlier had miraculously dispersed, leaving only faintly shimmering stars set into the navy night like diamonds in crushed velvet.

Aziraphale noticed, vaguely, that there were none of the moving, blinking dots that he’d come to recognize as airplanes, and that everything was just a bit brighter than the light pollution of the city usually allowed for.

In line with that, it was an uncommonly gorgeous night: cool, clear, the only noise the natural ambiance of the park. Aziraphale was equal parts pleased to be there and confused as to why; as he’d done on the walk, though, he kept silence and waited for Crowley to speak. He would when he was ready, Aziraphale knew, and there was no need to rush. Sweet things were best savored.

Hours slipped by, spent staring up at the blue and silver of eternity, silent and still. But as midnight passed by and dawn crept closer, Crowley finally spoke. His voice was quiet, careful. “Angel?”

Aziraphale pulled himself from his half-doze. “Yes, dear?”

And Crowley said, “The stars… they’re beautiful, tonight. Aren’t they?”

Aziraphale turned from the heavens to the demon next to him, who was lying on his side, looking at him with something yawning and incomprehensibly large in his gaze, the white starlight glinting off his yellow eyes.

He met those wide eyes, eyes surrounded by millennia-old marks—a starfield of freckles, the constellations etched on his face. Without looking away, he took one of Crowley’s hands in his, raised it to his lips. Slowly, achingly, he kissed along the ridge of knuckles, where scars in the shape of stars dotted the demon’s skin. And he allowed himself to say what he had been thinking for nigh six-thousand years.

“Yes, my love, they are.”

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone was curious, [here](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5c/93/b8/5c93b841adac8bb26249a74aef21ac51--historical-costume-historical-clothing.jpg) is the dress Crowley wears in Florence!
> 
> I got all my constellation translations from [this site](https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-names/)… yes, from what I've seen, Ophiuchus better translates to "The Serpent Bearer" rather than "The Serpent Holder." But Aziraphale _holds_ Crowley, so "holder" it was. I'm sappy like that.


End file.
